A Number of Pipers from Field Marshal...

13 December 2016

The Ulster-Scots Agency and Ulster Orchestra are delighted to announce that a number of pipers from renowned Pipe Band Field Marshal Montgomery will be joining the performers on stage at the Burns Concert 2017.

Field Marshal Montgomery has won a total of 65 major championships, namely 15 Scottish Championships, 12 British Championships, 12 European Championships, 11 World Championships, 12 Cowal Championships and all three editions to date of the United Kingdom Championships and are widely held to be at the pinnacle of the piping world.

With the concert due to be recorded by the BBC, and singer Emily Smith also returning to join the celebrations at Burns Night, this will be a concert not to be missed!

This fantastic night of music, dance and song, the sixth the Ulster Orchestra has hosted with support from the Ulster-Scots Agency awaits you on at 7.45pm on Saturday January 21 2017 in Belfast’s Waterfront Hall. Tickets are priced from £15.00 to £30.00 and are available from the Waterfront Hall Box Office on (028) 9033 4455 or online at www.ulsterorchestra.org.uk/events.

The Ulster Orchestra, conducted by John Logan, will lead performers including Emily herself, the Ulster-Scots Agency’s Juvenile Pipe Band, the Markethill Dancers and some special guests in a programme of music that mixes traditional favourites with more up to date work. Presenter Zoe Salmon will be your host for the evening in what promises to be an unmissable treat.

Having celebrated a decade as one of Scottish music’s most distinctively sublime voices, Emily Smith begins a fresh chapter in her illustrious, award-winning career. Her fifth solo album Echoes sees her return to her first love of traditional song and her gift for finding a personal connection in these passed-down, anonymously authored words is still at the heart of her craft. But this is a bold new phase in Emily’s music and with it comes what she describes as ‘a new Scottish sound’.

Emily was named BBC Radio Scotland’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year back in 2002 and the accolades have continued to flow as she won the USA Songwriting Competition in 2005, Scots Singer of the Year at the Scots Trad Music Awards in 2008 and she received two nominations in the 2012 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Emily first joined the Ulster Orchestra for Burns Night with her musician husband Jamie McClennan in 2015 and we are delighted to welcome her back in 2017.

Of course, the work of The Bard will feature throughout the programme and amongst other special guests, we are delighted to welcome back Christopher Tait, Scotland’s finest Robbie Burns reenactor, to bring the verse of the Bard to life.

So why not join Emily Smith, Jamie McClennan, Christopher Tait, Zoe Salmon and the Ulster Orchestra on January 21 2017? The skirl of the pipes, the whirl of jigs and reels and romance of Robbie Burns’ traditional songs will be the ultimate Burns Night celebration!